CVE-2023-53810

Updated on 09 Dec 2025

Severity

Awaiting Analysis

Details

Overview

About vulnerability

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

blk-mq: release crypto keyslot before reporting I/O complete

Once all I/O using a blk_crypto_key has completed, filesystems can call blk_crypto_evict_key(). However, the block layer currently doesn’t call blk_crypto_put_keyslot() until the request is being freed, which happens after upper layers have been told (via bio_endio()) the I/O has completed. This causes a race condition where blk_crypto_evict_key() can see ‘slot_refs != 0’ without there being an actual bug.

This makes __blk_crypto_evict_key() hit the ‘WARN_ON_ONCE(atomic_read(&slot->slot_refs) != 0)’ and return without doing anything, eventually causing a use-after-free in blk_crypto_reprogram_all_keys(). (This is a very rare bug and has only been seen when per-file keys are being used with fscrypt.)

There are two options to fix this: either release the keyslot before bio_endio() is called on the request’s last bio, or make __blk_crypto_evict_key() ignore slot_refs. Let’s go with the first solution, since it preserves the ability to report bugs (via WARN_ON_ONCE) where a key is evicted while still in-use.

Details

Affected product:
AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , TuxCare 9.6 ESU
Affected packages:
kernel @ 5.14.0 (+1 more)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

blk-mq: release crypto keyslot before reporting I/O complete

Once all I/O using a blk_crypto_key has completed, filesystems can call blk_crypto_evict_key(). However, the block layer currently doesn’t call blk_crypto_put_keyslot() until the request is being freed, which happens after upper layers have been told (via bio_endio()) the I/O has completed. This causes a race condition where blk_crypto_evict_key() can see ‘slot_refs != 0’ without there being an actual bug.

This makes __blk_crypto_evict_key() hit the ‘WARN_ON_ONCE(atomic_read(&slot->slot_refs) != 0)’ and return without doing anything, eventually causing a use-after-free in blk_crypto_reprogram_all_keys(). (This is a very rare bug and has only been seen when per-file keys are being used with fscrypt.)

There are two options to fix this: either release the keyslot before bio_endio() is called on the request’s last bio, or make __blk_crypto_evict_key() ignore slot_refs. Let’s go with the first solution, since it preserves the ability to report bugs (via WARN_ON_ONCE) where a key is evicted while still in-use.

Fixes